Chaplain's Corner

I don’t know if you have noticed lately, but “HOPE” has become a big deal in health care.  St. Boniface Hospital has been running commercials on local television marketing the hospital as a place of “Hope and Healing”.  The Health Sciences Hospital in Winnipeg, for a number of years now has as its tag line “Hope Caring, Learning, Discovery” and in the Spiritual Care and Palliative Care communities there has been considerable emphasis on hope in the last couple of years.

So why is “HOPE” such a focus these days in health care?  There are probably a number of reasons, but one is that we are learning that this spiritual attitude is important in the entire healing enterprise.  It is important for patients and their families to have hope.  It is equally important for the health care staff to have hope.  It is important, for as an old Irish proverb says, “Hope is the physician of every misery.”

“Hope is the physician of every misery.”  But wait a minute.  As much as I like these catchy quotes that we find on calendars and in inspirational books, often we have little idea what the quote is getting at.  So how is it that “Hope is the physician of every misery”? 

Well, asking the question, “What is hope?” might be a good place to begin.  I recently attended a day long workshop titled “Hope, Truth-telling and Ethics in Care”.    The presenter was Catherine Simpson, an ordained Anglican priest who has worked as a chaplain in Halifax and is presently about to complete her PhD.   She has been working with people afflicted with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).  As Catherine shared her research, her discoveries and conclusions she defined hope in this way.

“Hope is an emotional attitude that involves our desires and wants related to our values and goals, influences by what we believe to be possible for us that moves us to action.”  Did that clear things up for you?  Maybe not?  Let me see if I can put in language that I can understand.  Hope is our desire, connected to our belief that gets us moving in the direction of that desire.  Let me illustrate.  Suppose I have been diagnosed by my doctor to have stage one colon cancer.  As I talk to my doctor, I am told that this cancer, at this stage, is best treated by surgery and that the five year survival rate is 93%.

Now my desire and want is to live a long healthy life, I value the skills and training of my doctor and believe that with his help, my goal to regain my health is very possible.  Thus, I ask for an appointment with a surgeon, do all the pre-operative things I am asked to do, show up on the day of my surgery and have the cancer removed from my body.  The outcome is good, I enjoy continued good health and all is well.

Now, suppose the colon cancer is not found until it is in stage 4.  My doctor explains the facts.  The treatment for stage 4 colon cancer calls for the removal the cancer surgically.  It may also require surgery to remove parts of other organs such as the liver, lungs, and ovaries, where the cancer may have spread.  Then chemotherapy and/or radiation may be recommended to relieve symptoms.  But even with all this intervention the five-year survival rate is about 8%.

Now in this situation what about hope?  For myself, should this ever be my situation, I would thank the doctor for the information and care but refuse treatment of any kind.  Why would I do that?  Because given the survival rate, and what I know about chemotherapy and radiation, I would chose just to live out the remainder of my life, receiving comfort care when that became necessary and then die in the grace and peace of God.  And I would do this because my hope in such a situation would not be focused on a cure or even longer life but on comfort in the end and the joy of seeing Jesus soon.

However, you may choose something very different.  You may chose everything that the doctors are willing to give you.  Why, because your hope may be for longer life and you may believe that you are one of the fortunate 8% that live at least five years after such cancer is discovered. Now I would not be right and you wrong, nor would you be right and me wrong, instead, our choices and the actions we pursue would simply be reflective of our hope.

But hope is important not only in the face of disease.  Hope is an essential attitude to cultivate for life.  I have met people who have “everything to live for” but who have no hope –it is one of the saddest and most tragic realities I have ever encountered.  Then I have met people who have so many challenges, so many tragic realities in their life and who have hope and it is a beautiful thing.  A woman comes to mind, she is chronically ill, she has suffered much, yet she is hoping to enjoy family milestones: weddings, babies being born, watching grandchildren growing up; despite constant pain and increasing disability.  How can this be?  HOPE!  With hope the human spirit can endure just about anything, without it the human spirit can easily slip into the darkness of despair.

But hope is both transient and steadfast.  As I live and grow older many of my hopes have disappeared and been replaced with amended ones.  But I do have certain hopes that have steadfastly steadied my step and kept me moving in a certain direction for over 40 years.   One of those steadfast hopes for me is the desire to hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”  In the Gospels Jesus tells many stories.  I have enjoyed the stories since I was a child in Sunday School.  Unlike many stories, I have never tired of them for they so often infuse my heart with hope.  One such story is about a handful of servants who are entrusted to manage the master’s affairs while he is away on a trip.

When the master returns he finds two of the servants who have been faithful and have multiplied the master’s resources.  The master says to each of these servants, “Well done though good and faithful servant.”  The implication of the story:  that we are God’s servants and that we have been given the privilege of managing some of his affairs on earth.  If we do it well and are faithful in this calling, we will hear some day these words, “Well done!”

This hope: the desire, related to this goal, influenced by the possibility which motivates me to action; keeps me going and has for 45 years.  When some think of heaven they think of meeting relatives that have gone before or streets of gold, or mansions over the hilltop.  But when I think of heaven, I think of standing before God and hearing the words, “Well done Larry!”   This hope keeps me going, it gives me strength to face the challenges of life, and when every other reason to go on seems to have faded, it remains my hope.

What about you.  What is that desire, influenced by your values and goals, believed to be a real possibility that moves you to act?  You will have many over your life, hopes come and go but it seems in every life there is one, powerful, enduring hope:  think about your life – what is that hope for you?